I Was Made For You
by gwen of masbolle
Summary: Kel is back. She left involuntarily and has returned unannounced. She has new scars, both inside and out and appears determined to trust no one. The only thing she seems to be keeping closer to herself than the Princess Jessamine is the story of where she's been.
1. Chapter 1

A/N This is a story I started a while ago, posted, lost most of the work for and gave up on. So now I'm trying it again. Hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: I own nothing

**All of these lines across my face**

Dom unclenched his teeth as the woman rider finally came into view. He signaled his squad; they split in half and blended with the trees on either side of the road. Back at the camp he had told the men he wanted it to be as simple as possible, weapons drawn but hopefully not used. He planned to accomplish this by allowing time for his men in the woods to get just ahead of her thus close off chance of escape. He had ordered them to stay concealed until he and one of his corporals ambled up behind her, at which point they would have her trapped without ever raising her suspicion.

"She rides fast" Dom commented as they closed the distance with the rider. She had stolen a horse from camp in the early morning and it had taken them till that afternoon to catch sight of her.

"Sargent, I don't think that's a woman." The corporal disagreed.

Dom squinted at the figure in front of him. "Then it's been too long since the last time you were with one, of course it is." He quipped back.

The soldier forced a laugh, but didn't dare shoot back that Dom was one to talk. His leader's love life was not joked about. "Uh right, I guess she's just bigger than most women" was the awkward response.

Dom studied the woman while calculating where the other two groups should be by that point. He conceded that she was larger than an average woman. It was also clear that she was comfortable on a horse, though she was holding herself strangely.

Clearly having the same thoughts the man beside him started: "Sargent, does it look to you like…"

"Do you think she's injured?" Dom asked at the same time.

"Well, at least the fight will be easier."

Dom nodded and deemed that they had about a minute until the groups in the woods would pull out onto the road, he urged his horse forward.

Clearly having heard the approaching hoof beats behind her, the woman threw a glance over her shoulder. Dom and his corporal had worn plain breeches and tunics so as not to warn the thief that they were from the Own. For this reason Dom was taken aback when, after one brief glance the rider urged her horse into a gallop. Dom and his corporal exchanged glances, and hoping the rest of their squad was close broke into gallops of their own.

The strange way she had been riding seemed accentuated by her quickened pace and he could see that she was unable to feel the rhythm of the horse. Noting the gleam of metal in the woods he was happy to see that the rest of the squad had indeed gotten ahead of the lone rider. With that reassurance Dom brought his head down and his back up and raced after the woman. He could feel the wind whistling passed his ears and he narrowed his eyes as they started to water. It was at this moment that the two halves of the squad surged out of the trees and blocked the road ahead of the rider.

The rider, clearly surprised, pulled hard on the reigns and Dom sucked in a breath as the horse reared. When the horse turned and he saw the woman from the side his breath stopped altogether. There was a small child sitting in the front of the saddle. The squad could do nothing but stare and hold their breath as the rider fought to keep herself and the small figure in the saddle.

When the animal's hoofs finally hit the ground Dom was already beside the thief, he wasn't going to have her making a dash for the woods. He looked up to tell her just that and felt like he had been punched in the gut. All the air left his body in a rush, leaving him empty and aching. His heart hadn't just stopped, it had shattered into a million pieces and the splinters were lodged in both his gut and throat at the same time. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but couldn't.

"Dom"

Dom just stared, the word ringing in his ears and yet not making any sense in his brain.

"Sargent, should we follow protocol and…" the corporal's words trailed off as he too recognized the thief's face. "Lady Knight Keladry?" It was both a whisper and a question.

"Yes." Kel took a deep breath, "Soldiers, this is Princess Jessamine, we need to take her back to Corus." Her voice was full of steal and brought with it the instant action she could always rely on.

"Our spare mounts are all behind us." Someone offered.

"That's fine. We'll turn back, get them and then continue on." With that Kel turned her horse and with a quick glance at Dom the other seven men followed suit. Just one look at Dom had told them he was in no shape to contradict her orders.

Dom turned his horse numbly and followed the rest of the group. Kel would make eye contact with no one, Dom's brain had turned to mush and everyone else was trying to do the mathematics. The lady knight had been gone for about five months, a period of time made painfully obvious to them by their leader's despair over it. The Princess Jessamine was prince Jasson the Second's daughter and had been missing for about the same amount of time. However to everyone's knowledge they hadn't disappeared together. Had the knight been sent after the princess? In that case, why had everyone thought they were both dead?

Dom just sat and stared at the back of Kel's head. She was back, she was back, she wasn't dead, she was alive. The thoughts swirled through his brain so fast he couldn't catch hold of anyone of them at a time. He noted the familiar width of her shoulders, the color of her hair, now a little longer than it had ever been, and the new scar that ran along the side of her head.

She was alive. Alive

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	2. Chapter 2

**Thank you to those who reviewed. I will be answering questions slowly so if you don't have all the answers in this chapter you will just have to wait for the next.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**Tell you the story of who I am**

The minutes ticked by as the little blue eyes bore into Dom. He smiled inwardly as he felt the little princess' frustration mounting. She was playing a modified version of peekaboo with the men of the Own and Dom was clearly not cooperating. Her game had so far provided leagues of entertainment for her and successfully won over each man she played with. She would stare the man down till he noticed her, then just as his attention shifted to her she would flash the soldier a shy, heartwarming smile before turning and hiding against Kel.

Kel. Dom's inward smile vanished as he thought about the reason he wouldn't look over at the blue eyes. The reason he wasn't looking to his left at all.

"Oneesan, why won't that man look at me?"

Kel's eyes flicked over to the tall sergeant riding beside her and wondered how to answer her little girl.

"Is he mad at me?" The little girl wanted to know. "Does he hate me?" Then with a gasp as she realized a final, awful possibility. "Do I hate him?"

"No Imouto he doesn't hate you."

"But do I hate him?" She would not be distracted from the most important question.

"Let's work through the steps like I taught you." The child nodded; clearly this meant something to her, though it sounded ridiculous to Dom. "Has he done anything to hurt you?"

The girl paused and thought as only children can about a rhetorical question. "No" was the final reply.

"Has he done anything to hurt anyone you love?"

Again a pause and then a "No"

"Well then there's not much reason to hate him is there?"

The little blue eyes narrowed at Dom, whose badly abused heart was melting from the interchange.

"He's not looking at me, that's a little bit mean."

Kel bent down and whispered in her ear. She nodded and turned to look back at Dom.

"Why don't you look at me?" Kel's quick poke to the girl's side had her trying again. "Please Sir, why won't you look at me?" Dom's inward smile was back but he fought hard to match her serious tone as he tried to find an answer that would make sense to her.

"Because Princess, I was waiting for you or your lady knight to say hello back to me. I had, after all already extended my greetings to you."

"Oh," the little blue eyes opened wide with understanding. "Well hello Sir." Dom smiled, this time outwardly and turned his head to meet eyes with the little blue ones. "Oneesan, you have to say hello"

"Hi Dom" it was almost a whisper, said on the end of the breath like a sigh. She hadn't even known she was holding her breath.

Their eyes came together and Dom had to steal his heart before it engaged in some new form of self-mutilation.

Dom stared at Kel and still could not quite believe what he was seeing. It had been several leagues of riding before the haze had started to lift from his brain after he had first seen her. When it did he set about systematically sorting through his thoughts and filing his feelings away. With that done he had taken charge of the ride to the capital, making sure they had provision for the week's worth of riding ahead of them and attending to other details, all while obstinately ignoring Kel.

Now as her eyes met his she could see the emotions, which had been so carefully filed away threating to break loose. She had known this moment would come, she just hadn't thought it would be so soon. "I'm sorry Dom" She whispered again.

He didn't nod, he didn't scowl, he didn't even blink as he asked "So princess, how is it that you came to meet your lady knight here?"

Kel, fighting off emotions of her own with a Yamani mask laid a hand on her girl's shoulder. "Imouto, remember, we are going to tell your father, uncle and grandfather before anyone else." She avoided looking at Dom as she said this. Dom clamped down hard on the hurt that sprang up at this directive. He concentrated instead on the frowning princess.

"Your lady knight? What's a your lady knight?"

"Me Imouto, I'm a lady knight."

The little curly head looked over at Dom, "Are you a lady knight?" That brought laughs from the men around them.

"No, I'm not even a knight"

"Oh, are you as strong as Oneesan?" Dom wondered briefly at the names the two had for each other but it was Wolset who answered as he rode up beside the little girl.

"Oh no, no one is as strong as our lady knight."

Dom nodded at the man and dropped back to take the spot he had vacated. As he moved away he heard the little princess declare "Then I want to be a lady knight when I'm big like you."

Dom watched the scar on the back of Kel head as they rode on. He resolved that whether he had to wait for her to tell the King first or not he was going to learn her story. He was going to embrace the fact that she was back and he was going to rebuild what they had once had. His mother had always told him he was a blind optimist, and maybe he was, but he did understand that his goal was going to take a while.

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	3. Chapter 3

**Thank you for the reviews, I sit down to write because you.**

**I own nothing of Tamora Pierce's world**

**So many stories of where I've been**

Kel wrapped a protective arm around her little girl's sleeping form and closed her eyes. It felt almost foreign sleeping on a bed roll after all the time she'd spent with nothing between herself and the ground.

She heard someone in the camp start to whistle a slow tune, a common lullaby. She wished he would stop; it only reminded her of the last time she had slept surrounded by these same men. Granted, at that point they were in a ship cabin's bunks as they been on their way down from the northern border. It had been early spring and they had all been looking forward to seeing the capital again, a feeling that sat in stark contrast to the dread that currently sat heavily in her stomach at the thought of Corus.

The wind in the trees rose, sounding almost like wind howling through the rigging. She sunk into the memory. She could almost smell the salt water, and hear the roar of the ocean as it tried to sink the boat. The men around her were shouting and scrambling up the mast as it rocked from one life threating angle to the next in front of her eyes. Her stomach heaved, from the picture in front of her or the rolling of the deck under her feet she wasn't certain. Her hair was whipping around her face and the wind and water were assaulting her as she tried to keep her balance on the slippery planks below here feet.

She glanced around, she didn't know where she was needed, didn't have any idea what she could do to be helpful, she just didn't know ships well enough. At a lost she tried finding a familiar face. When she had woken up in the cabin below deck the rest of the bunks had been empty, but she couldn't seem to find anyone on deck that she recognized. She squinted into the darkness, lighted only periodically by blinding flashes of lighting. After what felt like ages, but was in all likeliness only a mere moment she thought she caught sight of Dom's figure on the other side of the deck.

As she started forward there was a deafening crack and she watched in horror as the mast became victim to a lightning bolt. She saw in slow motion the great beam splinter and tilt crazily to one side. She felt like she could see the face of every single man who had, only moments before been clinging to the mast, plunge with it towards the sea. She watched as a big burly sailor she hadn't met fell towards the dark water, arms flailing and eyes so wide they looked surreal, then his body made contact with the darkness and he was gone. Not one blink later a ship's boy, not more than twelve lost grip of the rope he had been clinging to and took his plunge in turn. His mouth was open in a scream that was snatched by the wind practically before it left his lungs. She lunged forward, she had to help, she didn't know how, but she could not watch another soul be lost to the angry water around her. She started to clamber blindly through the tangle of rope that had once been the rigging and with each flash of lightning saw the horrors around her. She saw a man trapped under the beam that was once the boom and surged forward with new purpose.

Just as she was climbing over the mast some object she never saw was caught up by the wind and hurled towards her. It slammed into her and she felt her feet lift off the ground and her whole body fly even further than she ever had out of a saddle.

The rest of the night came in flashes and a blur of desperation. When she hit the water she had been convinced that she was going to die, that she was dead. However she had found the surface and was able to breath in half water and half air before being forced back under.

At some point she had found a piece of the ship, some planked ripped from the side of the ship by the wind's temper tantrum. She clung to it and refused to let it go again, each time her head was forced under her muscles would scream as she forced them to tighten around the rough wood, literally holding on for dear life. She was not under the impression that she breathed that night, instead coughing and, when the cold finally sunk in, shivering. After a while she stopped trying to see anything and simply closed her eyes against the onslaught of seawater.

She drifted and sunk and kicked and fought to stay alive. Eventually the storm died down and she crawled onto the plank and fell asleep.

Jessamine stirred under Kel's arm and brought Kel back to the present. She bent her head forward and kissed her little girl's head, murmuring soothing words to her. The girl's breathing slowed and she fell back into dead sleep. Kel sighed; she wasn't the only one who had been through bad times in foreign places. She was simply happy that Jessamine was sleeping at all these days. They had come a long way together. With that she closed her own eyes and relaxed her breathing, blocking all the noises around her until she at last found sleep.

**Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. **

**I am in need of a beta. Is anyone interested? Is there anyone you recommend?**


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